This is the largest personnel change in the foundation in the past five or six years, and it occurred during the most depressed period of ETH price.
After Aya Miyaguchi’s promotion to the position of chairman of the Ethereum Foundation caused dissatisfaction among some community members, the Ethereum Foundation has ushered in new appointments. On March 1, the Ethereum Foundation announced two new co-executive directors to take over Aya’s original position - Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak .
Compared to Aya, these two new executive directors have extremely strong technical backgrounds. BlockBeats will introduce their information in detail in this article.
Hsiao-Wei Wang
At the critical moment when the Ethereum Foundation ushered in a major leadership adjustment, Hsiao-Wei Wang, with his profound technical background and outstanding community influence, officially became one of the Foundations co-executive directors. This blockchain pioneer from Taiwan, China, has been focusing on the core research of Ethereum for 7 years and has made important contributions in the fields of Sharding and Beacon Chain.
Hsiao-Wei Wang started out as a backend engineer. In 2016, he accidentally came into contact with blockchain and was attracted by this world full of decentralized ideals, so he decided to join it. At that time, Ethereum founder Vitalik was looking for contributors interested in Ethereum research. Hsiao-Wei did not hesitate at all and took the initiative to apply. He eventually joined the Ethereum team and became one of the core developers.
From that moment on, she devoted herself to the technical research of Ethereum, and her most representative contribution was the development of Sharding technology. Sharding technology is a key upgrade to solve the scalability problem of Ethereum, significantly improving network throughput and making Ethereum more efficient and smooth when processing large numbers of transactions.
In addition to sharding technology, she is also deeply involved in the research and development of Casper, Beacon Chain, and Sharding P2P network to ensure the technical robustness of these core infrastructures. In addition, she has been responsible for the review and proof-of-concept (PoC) development of the Ethereum protocol for a long time, laying a solid technical foundation for the advancement of Ethereum 2.0 (Eth 2).
Despite her years of experience in the technology field, Hsiao-Wei has not limited herself to the world of code, but has actively participated in community building. She often participates in and organizes various technical conferences on behalf of the Ethereum Foundation, especially in Taiwan, where she has planned and promoted many high-quality Ethereum technology exchange activities, successfully building a bridge between local developers and the global Ethereum ecosystem.
For example, at the 2018 Ethereum Sharding Workshop Taipei, she was the organizer and also played a central role in the technical discussion, discussing the future development direction of Ethereum with global developers. Her contribution not only enhanced the global influence of the Taiwanese Ethereum community, but also gave more developers the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of Ethereums cutting-edge technology.
Hsiao-Wei Wang took center stage at the 2018 Taipei Ethereum Sharding Workshop
If she had to describe herself in a few words, Hsiao-Wei chose unexpectedly brave, sincere, and brave. This may sound a little special, but it aptly reflects her personality: she is brave in technical exploration, sincere in community communication, and has a bit of cute stubbornness and tenacity. Whether it is breaking through technical bottlenecks in code or promoting cooperation in the community, she has demonstrated this trait.
Today, as co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, Hsiao-Wei will not only continue to delve deeper into technology, but also looks set to take on more management and coordination responsibilities.
Tomasz Stańczak
Lets look at another co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, Tomasz Stańczak. As the founder of Nethermind, he is not only one of the core developers of Ethereum, but also has conducted in-depth research in key areas such as MEV (maximum extractable value) and PBS (proposer-builder separation). Today, he stands at a critical juncture in the development of Ethereum, shouldering the responsibility of promoting the continued growth of the entire ecosystem.
Before entering the blockchain field, Tomasz was an engineer in the financial market with extensive technical experience. In 2017, he officially joined the Ethereum development team as a core developer, was an early team member of FlashBots, and is also a member of the board of directors of the Starknet Foundation.
He then founded Nethermind, one of the most important execution clients of Ethereum today. Nethermind was originally just an experimental project, but under Tomaszs leadership, it quickly grew into one of the most important infrastructures in the Ethereum ecosystem, and is listed as one of the top five execution clients along with Geth, Besu, and Erigon.
With his strong execution ability, Tomasz has built Nethermind from a small team into a world-renowned blockchain development organization. He has not only established a complete talent training and recruitment system, but also promoted Nethermind to carry out in-depth cooperation in multiple fields such as Ethereum infrastructure, re-staking (EigenLayer) and StarkNet, making it a key role in promoting the development of the Ethereum ecosystem.
Compared with Geths historical accumulation, Nethermind has attracted more and more developers and institutional users with its efficient code architecture, flexible customization and strong enterprise-level support.
As a technological innovator, Tomasz’s work has also caused controversy. For example, Nethermind and Besu stopped storing Ethereum’s historical data, a decision that triggered public criticism from Geth core developer Péter Szilágyi, who believed that this was irresponsible behavior and could mislead users.
This was also one of the reasons why Péter Szilágyi quit Ethereum. Since even the core developers are maximizing their interests relative to other developers, why bother to make it better? I am deeply disappointed with everyone involved.
Currently, Tomasz is gradually stepping down from his role as CEO of Nethermind, but will remain involved. His new mission at the foundation is to ensure that Ethereum remains committed to its core values: open source, global permissionless collaboration, privacy, and security while scaling.
This will be one of the most important moments in Ethereum’s history
Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko said in a post on March 2: “The past few months have been turbulent. Although Ethereum still needs to make many changes to win, if it can be grasped properly, this will be one of the most important moments in Ethereum’s history.”
He especially spoke highly of Tomasz Stańczak, saying that he was the only person who could join the Ethereum Foundation from outside and immediately promote change. Tomasz built Nethermind from scratch and developed it into one of the most successful independent organizations in the Ethereum ecosystem. He has always been active around the world, communicating deeply with developers, researchers and users through practical actions. His joining will bring stronger execution and technical implementation capabilities to the Ethereum Foundation.
At the same time, Hsiao-Wei Wang is also an indispensable part of the development of Ethereum. Not only is she one of the few developers who was deeply involved in the early stages of the transition from Ethereum to Eth 2, she also drew the first diagram showing how sharding works. Not only does she understand how Ethereum research evolves into standardized specifications and eventually lands in a production environment, she also has the unique perspective of a long-term core member of the foundation. Her joining forms a perfect complement to Tomasz in terms of technology and strategy.
Tim Beiko also emphasized that Ethereums culture is unique, with both top-down strategic decision-making and bottom-up technology-driven. Today, with Aya Miyaguchi as the chairman of the foundation and the establishment of formal and informal consulting networks, the governance structure of the Ethereum Foundation is gradually improving. Although Aya is still a controversial figure, Ethereum must continue to be attractive to new forces while adhering to the OG values.
The final impact of this personnel adjustment of the Foundation may take time to fully manifest. But what is certain is that this is a good start to the reform, and Vitalik is also trying to listen to the opinions of the community.
